Producer: Christophe RossignonWriter, Director: Christian CarionCast:Dian Kruger, Benno Fürmann, Gary Lewis, Daniel Brühl, Guillaume Canet, Palmer Dany Boon, Horstmayer Lucas Belvaux, Gordon Steven Robertson, Jörg Bernard Le Coq, Ian Richardson, Robin LiangOn Christmas Eve in 1914, a remarkable incident occurred in the trenches where the Germans faced the British and the French. There was a spontaneous cease-fire, as the troops on both sides laid down their weapons and observed the birth of Jesus Christ . The irony of this gesture is made clear in the opening scenes of Merry Christmas in which schoolchildren of the three nations sing with angelic fervour, each in their own language, about the necessity of wiping the enemy from the face of the earth. The Christmas Eve truce actually happened, although not on quite the scale director Christian Carion would have us believe. He is accurate, however, in depicting the aftermath: Officers and troops were punished for fraternising with the enemy in wartime. The priest who celebrated mass in no man’s land was savagely criticised by his bishop, who believed that the patriotic task of the clergy is to urge the troops into battle and reconcile them to death. The film’s most poignant moment is as the male tenor Nikolaus Sprink doing front duty voice and his girlfriend Anna Sorensen who’s spending Christmas on the front sing Silent Night and Adeste Fidelis from the German trenches, they joined in by the Scottish bagpipes; lit- up Christmas trees emerge and circle the trenches; slowly, tentatively, soldiers begin to poke their heads up over the ramparts and eventually they lay down their arms and join in the cratered no man’s land to listen to the singing and the bagpipes of the Scots and then to celebrate mass. The next morning, Christmas Day, there is a soccer game. Precious bits of chocolate, bottles of wine, whisky, etc and photographs of wives and girlfriends are shared. And they bury their dead. As the day draws to a close and hostilities begin they momentarily shelter each other in their trenches. TECHNICAL EXPERTISEChristian Carion’s film is a trilingual portrait of a short stretch of the front, a small enough section of the war that we’re able to follow as the key players are few and the narrative simple. Though dealing with war and is ravages, the film is entertaining and heartwarming to begin with. The end does drive the nail in the coffin hard and fast. Yet there are some terrible moments of war cliché (the dead soldier’s open eyes staring right at us, the brotherly dynamics between Palmer and his siblings) that hinder it from having any witty revelations about war. The dramatic license of the script is to advantage and does bear an impact on the film. Carion has kept the pace going, though somewhere he slows down. The ambience of that memorable Christmas Eve is so well-created, right down to the playback singing for Sprink and Sorenson which is indeed classy. The casting commendable as each actor melds with his character and into the narrative.Merry Christmas, was nominated for the foreign film Oscar, BAFTA and Golden Globe Awards in 2005.RATINGOne star each for story, direction, acting and music.
